When the Vermont Law School weighs in on environmental issues, the world takes notice.

We do, too.

When its professors and students suggest we shift to the front of our seats, we shift.

This month, the South Royalton stalwarts suggest we take a look at the most pivotal decisions facing the world in 2014.

As with the school’s previous three annual “Watch Lists,” this one is part heads-up, part legal analysis, part call to action.

The list contains opinions and doesn’t disguise them.

Fundamental to the Top 10 is another number: 400 parts per million — the concentration of carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere.

It’s been 3 million years since we hit that level, the law school notes, and our current, formidable contribution to greenhouse gases appears to be putting us on a track that is soggy, warm, expensive and violent.

But the Watch List is not just another alarm, says Melissa Scanlan, director of the school’s Environmental Law Center.

“Laws, policies and regulations can serve to impede or advance progress in addressing climate disruption,” she writes in the list’s introduction.

It turns out we (as Vermonters, U.S. citizens and as earthlings) have choices — and some of the most important ones are outlined in this issue.

These terms of debate occasionally verge into lawyerly jargon, but not often. We’ve taken the liberty of translating a few acronyms here and there.

But otherwise, these brief legal briefs speak eloquently to the architecture and mechanics of our political will. Read them slowly if you need to — but read them!

You might begin by asking a single question: Can our species discover (or rediscover) ways to protect ourselves from climatic folly?

The list’s authors are optimistic we can — if enough people stand up and take notice.